Linda Wobeskya (right) worked the arm of Brian Theard in her offices. Physical therapist Linda Wobeskya is a Zero Balancing therapist in Mill Valley, Calif. Zero Balancing is a mind-body healing technique which incorporates both eastern and western wellness techniques.

Linda Wobeskya (right) worked the arm of Brian Theard in her offices. Physical therapist Linda Wobeskya is a Zero Balancing therapist in Mill Valley, Calif. Zero Balancing is a mind-body healing technique which

What if you could get therapy without talking, massage without undressing, and expand your mind without meditation or drugs?

Zero Balancing, an emerging form of alternative healing, claims to do all of the above, by releasing energy trapped in the bones to ease chronic physical and emotional pain.

Since "ZB" was first created in California by an osteopathic physician in the early 1970s, there are now 400 certified Zero Balancing practitioners in the nation who use gentle pressure and traction on joints to clear blocks in the body's energy flow. Twenty of them work in the Bay Area.

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Fans, including those who say they aren't exactly sure how it works, say the important thing is that they feel better, after years of trying everything else, from yoga to Rolfing to acupuncture.

Zero Balancing, they say, adjusts their skeleton and their attitude at the same time. For about $100 a pop.

There are plenty of skeptics who insist Zero Balancing is nothing more than a pricey placebo.

"I'm a bone doctor and what's in there is all circulatory; I'm less likely to think my sensory input is coming from my pelvis," said San Francisco General orthopedic surgeon Richard Coughlin, who is also a clinical professor at UC San Francisco.

"But everyone needs to do what works for them," Coughlin said. "If it helps relieve tension, and you can afford it, then all these somatic modalities are doing some good."

Zero balancers point out that acupuncturists once faced similar criticism. There is a lot about energy that's not yet been studied, they counter, making it hard to discount the improvements they've witnessed firsthand.

"All of us have had trauma of one sort or another that leaves an impression in soft tissue and bone," said the Zero Balancing founder, Dr. Fritz Smith, 83, of Borrego Springs (San Diego County). "If a person doesn't do something to release this held tension in the body, it stays there giving negative feedback, which over the years turns into physical pain, emotional upset, even depression."

Someone who is well-balanced sails through life, with their wind energy perfectly tacked into the structure of their body (boat), Smith explained.

For others, life is a constant, confounding struggle against the current.

Body energy gets stuck

Each body's energy gets stuck in different places, for different reasons, said Linda Wobeskya, a licensed physical therapist in Mill Valley and director of the Zero Balancing certification program. The two-year program requires 100 hours of class time on topics such as "the alchemy of touch" and "form and fulcrums," and students must give at least 65 sessions, write reflections on all of them, and then pass a test by performing Zero Balancing on certified teachers.

Wobeskya gives about six Zero Balancing sessions each week. She begins by asking the client what has been on their mind lately, how their body is feeling and what they'd like to get out of the hour.

She uses the information to find the points of tension where energy and bone intersect and then applies pressure. When energy moves beneath her fingers, she feels the sensation of pressing on a wet sponge.

Longtime client Cindy Moore of Petaluma says she feels a buzzing sensation travel from where Wobeskya presses to other parts of her body. In the five years Moore has been getting monthly Zero Balancing treatments, her pain from hip surgery and nerve damage to her foot has dissipated, and she can walk with a flowing movement again.

"The medical community had written me off, saying I had chronic pain, and prescribed pain pills," Moore said. "This gave me my life back. And it lifted my mood, made me believe I would eventually walk normally again."

Medical model broken

Smith first got the notion to marry energy and touch during an acupuncture retreat at the Esalen Institute spiritual center in Big Sur. A fellow student, 81, hadn't been able to close his hand for a decade, due to a medical condition, despite trips to Harvard and the Mayo Clinic. An acupuncturist at Esalen put a needle on the left side of the man's leg for 10 seconds. The man immediately starting moving his hand, Smith said.

Smith began adding acupuncture to his osteopathic practice, and saw more of his patients improve. As a suggestion of last resort from his wife, he even tried acupuncture on the spine of the family pet - a baby goat dying of pneumonia. After days of listlessness under a heat lamp, the creature started to move, and eventually thrived.

"I began to understand energy by the needle, then I brought that concept into the field of touch," Smith said.